Design number: 24 Year: 1979
Highwayman was designed for Tony Clegg and daughter Libby as an ocean-capable One Tonner, a term which needs some explaining. By this time the One Ton level had already cast its dye as a grand prix class, with boats becoming more and more inshore oriented, even despite the harsh lessons of the 1979 Fastnet. Highwayman, on the other hand, was intended primarily for the mooted RORC Caribbean Race and general blue water capability, and as such was accepting an acknowledged cost to round-the-can performance under the IOR. The boat was also very definitively a cruiser-racer, spiritually more traditional than her contemporaries in her level of fit-out, but nevertheless enjoying a fast hull of good behavioural characteristics. It was a concept that Humphreys was to return to later with boats like Apriori, designed like Highwayman as an antedote to some of the excesses that were befalling yacht racing.
To date there have been three chapters in Highwayman’s life, the first in Libby’s hands, the second under famous nautical author Sir Peter Johnson’s ownership, and for the past few years under the ownership of Tjeerd and Karin Dijkstra. We generally see her every season as they cruise through Lymington towards the West Country from Holland.
Our results archive for Highwayman, like rather too many of our boats, has not been well maintained. However, we have found a summary of her 1986 results, the best of which are as follows:
1st Class III Cowes-St.Malo
